"b.i.t.c.h," said Lorelei.

Lilith smiled. "Thank you."

"What's this about? Why me?"

"Your boyfriend. Lover. Husband?"

She shook her head.

"The father of your child, then." Lorelei jumped, eyes riveted

to Lilith's too-pale face. "Which is an interesting trick, since every vampire I know is sterile."

"Julian isn't a vampire. Not anymore."

"So I'm given to understand. What is he, then?"

Lorelei shook her head. "Even if I knew, I wouldn't give you that."

Lilith pushed a long strand of white-blond hair back from her face. "So perhaps you're a little smarter than I was led to believe."

"What is this about?"

"War. If Julian responds as he should, it will all end here."

"I don't understand."

"He is an abomination, and he works to abominate all the

rest of you. Of us. He has to be stopped."

"According to whom?"

"According to the Book. And according to my orders." 195 Lorelei closed her eyes, suddenly tired. Her body felt heavy and slow. So there were religious fanatics in the vampire world, too. Somehow that didn't surprise her.

"It won't work," she said, trying to convince herself. "He won't come." She knew Julian, though. If they asked him to trade his life for hers, he would do it. She would have done the same for him.

Lilith stood, smiling down at her. "Oh, he'll come. Have no doubt of that."

"You can't do this, Julian."

It was the third or fourth or eighth time Lucien had said it, and still Julian refused to hear. He had no choice.

"One life for two. It's a fair trade."

"Mathematics aside, we have to come up with another plan.

This community is in no condition to lose you right now."

"And I'm in no condition to lose Lorelei. Or our baby."

"You don't understand the ramifications."

"I understand the facts."

He pulled the maps off the printer. The disk the pale vampiress had left on his desk had contained instructions for a trade, Julian for Lorelei, as well as maps and written directions to reach the exchange point. The instructions said Julian was to come alone.

"I'm going with you," Lucien said.

"No."

"If you go alone, it's all over."

"If you go with me, they'll kill her."

"Whoever she is, if she's alone, I can take her."

"What if she isn't alone?"

"Then I can take Ialdaboth, or die trying."

Julian closed his eyes. How could he make this decision

when he wasn't sure what was on the line? Lucien hadn't made everything completely clear, mostly, Julian felt, because he didn't know how to, or didn't understand all the nuances of the situation himself.

"You know him? Ialdaboth?"

"He was one of the first. My brother."

196.

"One of the First Demons?"

"Yes. Me, Aanu, Ialdaboth and Ruha. Aanu and I wrote the Book of Changing Blood. Ialdaboth and Ruha want to destroy it. That absolutely cannot happen, no matter what you or I have to sacrifice along the way."

Julian gave him a level look, a thick weight congealing in his chest. "What would you do if it were Vivian?"

"Exactly what I'm telling you to do."

"Can I believe that?"

"I've been telling the truth for twelve thousand years."

"You lied to Vivian."

"I withheld information. It's different."

Julian's laugh held little amus.e.m.e.nt. "If you withhold information from me in this, I'll rip your throat out."

"I don't think you could, but your point's taken." He took the maps out of Julian's hand and spread them across the desk.

"This is what we need to do."

"I don't know. She's very strange, that one."

"Can we keep her alive until he comes? Or is she too much of a danger?"

"I'm not sure yet. Perhaps you should read her."

Lorelei drifted awake on the exchange of voices. Holding as still as she could, holding even her breath, she listened. They were talking about her. But as consciousness returned, the voices faded. Not as if the speakers had left the room, but as if her ability to hear them had simply gone away.

Puzzled, she sat up. The small room was empty except for herself and the few amenities they'd supplied her. So where had the voices come from?

Her neck ached and her back hurt from sleeping on the thin pallet on the floor. Carefully, she stretched, ligaments popping and cracking along her spine. Her stomach roiled. This kind of treatment didn't mix well with early pregnancy. The stench in the room, from the bedpan she'd pushed as far away from her as the small s.p.a.ce would allow, didn't help.

"I could use some food!" she shouted, anger rising with her unsettled stomach. "Any of you sons of b.i.t.c.hes want to 197 bring me something to f.u.c.king eat!" She had to swallow the anger then, because if any more of it came out of her it would bring the meager contents of her stomach with it. She closed her eyes and breathed shallowly through her mouth, trying to regain control of her emotions, of her body.

The door opened, admitting the tall, pale vampiress. Lilith, Lorelei reminded herself. Her voice had been one of the two she'd heard earlier. In her head, she suddenly realized. What the h.e.l.l was going on?

"Is there a problem?" Lilith asked through a thin smirk.

Lorelei wanted to claw the lips off her face. "Yes, there's a problem. I need food, and I need to be somewhere that doesn't smell like a G.o.dd.a.m.n outhouse."

Lilith glanced at the bedpan, lip curling in delicate distaste.

"You shouldn't have filled it up so fast."

"I'm pregnant, you f.u.c.king moron. I have to pee a lot. And puke once in a while."

"You might want to moderate your language when your baby's born." She paused, with a hateful smile. "If it's born at all, after all this trauma."

Lorelei held back the urge to fly at her captor. She would have pa.s.sed out after two steps, the way her head was reeling.

But the anger sat hard and fiery just above her knotting, weaving belly. She concentrated on it, gathered strength from it. "You might want to get out of my sight before I rip the hair out of your head and make myself a pretty silver belt out of it." As she spoke, the anger seemed to come together in her solar plexus and shoot forward, an invisible laser beam of hatred.

Lilith blinked and took a step back. Her face seemed to grow paler, but it was hard to tell since it had started out nearly white anyway. She picked up the bedpan.

"I'll clean this for you." Was it Lorelei's imagination, or was Lilith's voice a shade weaker, less confident? "There'll be food in a few minutes."

She left the room. As the door closed behind her, a voice, like the earlier voices, sounded with bell-like clarity in Lorelei's head: "What is she?" 198

FIVE.

"Are you sure this is the right direction?" Julian wiped dust from his forehead as Lucien helped him down from yet another narrow tunnel. This one had led them to a small open s.p.a.ce, like a cave but obviously not made by nature.

"We're getting closer," Lucien replied. The last tunnel had barely been wide enough for his broad frame. In fact, Julian was relatively sure it hadn't been wide enough at all, by at least a few inches. But here was Lucien on the other side of it, though he looked a little hunched. "I can smell him."

"Who?"

"Ialdaboth."